The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain

Abstract

Roman Britain is a critical area of research within the provinces of the Roman empire. It has formed the context for many of the seminal publications on the nature of imperialism and cultural change. Roman rule had a profound impact culture of Iron Age Britain, with new forms of material culture, and new forms of knowledge. On the other hand, there is evidence that such impacts were not uniform, leading to questions of resistance and continuity of pre-existing cultural forms. Within the last 15-20 years, the study of Roman Britain has been transformed through an enormous amount of new and interesting work which is not reflected in the main stream literature. The new archaeological work by a young generation has moved away from the narrative historical approach towards one much more closely focused on the interpretation of material. It has produced new interpretations of the material and a new light on the archaeology of the province, grounded in a close reading of the material evidence as collected by previous scholars and exploiting the rich library of publications on Romano-British studies. For the first time, this volume draws together the various scholars working on new approaches to Roman Britain to produce a comprehensive study of the present state and future trajectory of the subject. Arranged thematically and focussed primarily on the archaeological evidence, the volume challenges more traditional narrative approaches and explores new theoretical perspectives in order to better understand the archaeology of the province and its place within the wider context of the Roman Empire.